Vaughan Wiles
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Hello MAHB and Paul and Ann Ehrlich,
I am currently reading your paper, “Population, Resources, and the Faith-Based Economy: the Situation in 2016”
Thank you for writing this intriguing paper. A lot of skill and care went into its preparation. So far, in my reading, if I were to have one comment, it would be that this paper is about the future of earth’s sustainability and how to communicate those ideas.
The one comment I like on the heading: “Governance, Institutions, and Collapse, inattention to earth’s sixth mass extinction, which is already threatening humanity’s life support system.”
The word that has transfixed me is inattention, which, it seems, is the lack of a human response. And if we are focusing on inattention, what is the psychological solution to heal and respond to inattention? When climate warming data supports information on sensitive climate change outcomes, what has been the response to date? Will world wide governments prepare a plan in time for climate warming mitigation before tipping points come into play? -
Hi,Eric, and MAHB
On the website Arctic News is suggesting that the February world temperature record, dated Saturday, April 16, 2016, is higher than anyone expected. We would assume that these are not the kind of numbers that the Paris Agreement was thinking about when they were meeting late last year. Nations were intending to hold global average temperatures to well below 2 C. Even after El Nino effects are considered, it would seem that heating has become more of an issue than it was just six months ago. These heating numbers (well over 2 C compared to pre-industrial levels, depending on who is reporting) that are coming out now are surprising scientists in this field, and may be a cause for both reflection and alarm.
Some of the climate websites that I like to read have become deeply concerned in describing their shock at these elevated earth temperatures. More heating is implied here as feedbacks begin, starting with Arctic ice loss and Greenland melting. It may prove to be an interesting summer in the northern hemisphere with these elevated temperatures. Due to current climate heating events, it’s time to think about either forming a new type of risk management institute or to open up a special department in an existing one. Disciplines that would seem out of place (human psychology, quantum physics and risk analysis together) should be referenced in this new institute. -
Hi, Eric,
I’ve been reading your post again. I like your sentence, “the current global population was cooperative in maintaining sustainability” which is an opportunity to address the obvious link to oxygen stability in the oceans so that humans and other life forms have enough oxygen to breathe. Climate change that entails heating the planet disturbs oxygen producing organisms and may lower oxygen levels on our planet.
Many, including scientists, have wondered that heating will burn forests, disturb food production and cause animal and plant migration. (also ice loss and methane releases.) But the potential for collapsing oxygen levels brought about by acidic conditions in the oceans due to the uptake of too much CO 2. It seems outrageous that we, in the generation we live in now, could face oxygen disruption. By this, I mean a chemical/oxygen disturbance that would slowly bring about biological and physiological changes to humans. These would be very subtle changes at first, but as oxygen levels diminish, so may humans. As you may have already guessed, oxygen, we presume, will not obey the European Union, U.S. Congress, the well-thought-of New Zealand parliament, or anyone else. Foundations and governments, we would hope, will re-energize their goals more towards a role in funding techniques and ideas, strategy and foresight, for mitigating oxygen depletion. In other words, this planet means more to us with sustainable levels of oxygen, and not a disturbed chemical soup that we can only hope our biology can adapt to.
If the atmospheric scientists who are reporting now are correct in their research that elevated heating is occurring outside of model predictions, then it would seem that, somehow, we have missed something. New thinking in risk management circles that provide data to places like the United Nations and scientists need new thinking in how the ingredients for life are manufactured on our planet. If they are disturbed, what is the implication for humans, and how quickly can we respond?
These subtle changes in oxygen levels may affect our biology. You may begin to notice mood changes and elevated stress levels in yourself, your friends and your family. Fluctuating and unstable oxygen levels may be a developing recipe for disturbed relationships in governments and in our private lives. -
Hi, Eric,
Thanks to you and MAHB I have a forum to post to with my morning coffee. Your hypotheses on human behavior, which is expansion until collapse, and to frame solutions as quickly as possible so that policy makers and others can find their way forward. For instance, the drought in southern Syria sent hungry, destitute farmers, without water, into the Syrian cities and created a migrant nightmare all over Europe. This should have been addressed with timely international aid supplies, so that Syrian farmers could have stayed on their land where they wanted to be, and not waiting in a refugee/migrant camp in Europe somewhere. So a question reminds me to think of the psychology of crisis response and how we humans mitigate climate driven disasters for the benefit of sensitive populations. And the answer is, we are not that great at it, due to the formula that human psychology does not respond well to an ongoing environmental threat, because we are too busy with our own complex lives. Do you think that Germany and other European countries might have liked to have sent a few supertankers full of food and supplies to the farming families of Syria, rather than open its doors to a million migrants, and counting, because their psychology of emergency response for Syria, it would seem, was somewhat late.
So, Eric, you have begun to outline the way forward for the entire world, based on human behavior, (psychology) to build a new indefinitely sustained planet built for population cooperation.
The drought in Syria was well reported in climate circles, and we wonder that, if policy makers had had better and more timely information, that a response for Syria might have been more effective. -
Hi, Eric,
Just reading one of my favorite climate reporters, Robert Scribbler, and his recent post, titled “Too Close to Dangerous Climate Thresholds.” He has said that the Japanese Meteorological Agency shows that the first 3 months of 2016 were about 1.5 C above the IPCC preindustrial baseline. This is not good news, as we are supposed to be nowhere near these temperatures, even with the El Nino factor. When I said in previous posts that solutions for climate change were a waiting game, I didn’t think that it would just take a few days to find out which direction we may be headed. (heating)
Many policy makers and others, it is our guess, would like a timely monthly magazine on climate related news. Talking to some of my friends in policy making, there is little collected climate news that they can easily digest, and that is up to date and easy to read, with just the basic facts. We have made some prototype books on the Apple platform, but we need more partners to help us with this project. If anyone is interested, please let me know.
So, Eric, this may be our next step, to make sure that clear communication is in everyone’s hands on future and present climate scenarios. -
Eric, Further, I had another thought. There are remedies for the situation that planet earth is in. World leaders and others often talk of the moon shot scenario. For instance, in climate heating mitigation. They are convinced that this technology and / or scenario is already here. It’s just that nobody knows about it yet. Well, Eric, that is absolutely true. The moonshot to solve climate change, low CO2 power generation, population density demands, is here now. The thing is, some of it is so forward thinking (but not unreasonably so) that there are few places that can manage this data where stakeholders (governments, corporations) can implement these plans to everyone’s advantage. Frustration is implied. So the plan is to wait. Everyone is going to wait. Policymakers, scientists, risk management professionals, are all going to sit down in the shade and wait. Emergency response for runaway CO2 and methane means that everyone has to notice that there is a problem, so here we go into the world of human psychology. So, Eric, I really like your post and I would like to elaborate on these engaging topics that you have brought up, soon.
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Hello MAHB and Doug Carmichael.
Thanks, Doug, for your very nice article, “In Response: The Climate Change Challenge.”
It’s refreshing to read an article that manages to say that there are many sides to the planet heating problem that we need to address, and that clear global thinking, hopefully, should be encouraged.
I often attempt to find articles written regarding consumption of resources and how meaningful alternatives might help, while at the same time leaving the economies of people, particularly in emerging countries, able to manage their lives without going broke. Some tell the world to leave fossil fuels in the ground. The reality is, this, perhaps, cannot happen for some time to come, because everything that we do on this planet involves the availability and use of fossil fuels. Your ideas for how people need income and need power that they can afford in order to lead their lives is a perception that some countries, on occasion, may overlook.
We can solve our power needs carefully if we resist the urge to blame the power sources that have helped us build our economies for some time now and will continue to do so in the future. It would be wise to partner with power providers to build the next generation of low carbon fuels so that we can move forward with our economy in safety. The psychology of behavioral economics could be a tool to help us navigate the future of our climate without becoming overly emotional for data that we might not yet have.
Psychologically, we may need to be aware that our focus should move away from the worry of how we might have warmed the planet, and move into solutions towards foresight in solving our planet’s heating problem. -
Hello MAHB,
On NASA’s twitter feed, Carlos Perez Garcia-Pando, AXA Chair on Sand and Dust Storm, Barcelona Super Computer Center, wrote in his tweet: “We can’t control weather, but what we can do is to improve our prediction ability to allow more informed plans or mitigation actions. This is not only a scientific challenge but also a supercomputing and big data one.”I think that this is a very interesting perspective. Perhaps the question is not whether the statement is correct (“we can’t control the weather”) but how would human psychology manage if it was incorrect. His statement might then read “weather control systems may be a possibilty under certain circumstances, with information from large data systems,
(NASA, etc.) coupled with information systems that may or may not be invented yet.” This is, literaly, the trillion dollar question. It wasn’t that long ago that if you drove a car in New York City, (circa 1900) by law you had to have a flag waver walk in front of your car waving a red flag to alert astonished and frightened pedestrians and horse drawn carriages. I suspect that this is sort of where we are now with the psychology of new thinking on what our options may be for climate heating mitigation. The other situation that is presented to us is that we seem to be under some type of time frame for climate heating mitigation. If this is so, then uncomplimentary data systems, perhaps, need to be combined sooner rather than later. -
Hello, MAHB,
I went to the University of California, Santa Cruz to get access to the paper. The library is surrounded in tall redwood trees, and is a very beautiful place to read and work. The staff at the library retrieved your article in BioScience, “The Climate Change Challenge and Barriers to the Exercise of Foresight Intelligence.” My first impressions are that this is the first paper that I have read that encompasses a great deal of human psychology on the subject of climate sensitivity. I was very pleased to have this paper in my hands. I have not read all of the paper yet, but I would still like to mention a quick comment. In your conclusion you mention that there is no silver bullet that would alleviate the environmental crisis we face. And this is where it gets interesting. There is the possibility of a Hail Mary pass. The information on this outcome might be considered ever so slightly disruptive, but maybe our only avenue for addressing a climate that is in severe reaction. (the current bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, for example). It would seem that ice stability, particularly in the Arctic, is what we should be most concerned about, and that the Hail Mary pass concerns this Arctic ice coverage. -
Thank you, MAHB, for your reply.
A long time ago, in a shire far, far away, (Walnut Creek in the lands of California) I had a friend who loved me and mentored me, who, some say, was a retired nuclear physicist who worked alongside Albert Einstein. (privacy, etc.) We were fortunate emough to be in a small group that were thrown together for the love of psychology and other thinking. This group referenced that there are basically two types of people, reporters and generators. (for more on this, please see Stanford’s website, e-corner) As you may have surmised, generators need reporters, and generators, as we know, are not highly trained in reporting. (the Wright brothers – post flight) Although I make an attempt, I am no reporter. The data that I have bumped into very well could be paramount in assisting risk management advisors in their work. I am currently mentored by a new scientist who is one of your ex-colleagues from Stanford. My goal is to incorporate this accidental knowledge into risk management systems as soon as possible.
I appreciate your suggestions for reading research, and I will look at it very soon. -
Hi, Eric,
I was fortunate last night, April 13th, to attend Jared Diamond’s talk, “Crisis, Stress and Change, in Individuals and in Nations” on the Stanford campus. On stage were Jared Diamond and Paul Ehrlich talking about the psychology of crisis response. I was very surprised and pleased to hear so much reference to human psychology and how it has molded world history and will continue to do so. Psychology is one of my favorite subjects. Which brings me back to your post, Eric, largely about the psychology of human behavior. Hyper-specialization, particularly in Silicon Valley, is how we get things done here. If you have broad concepts that are also far-reaching and way out of the box, and also cross boundaries both psychologically (data management of sensitive ideas) and from an engineering point of view, your path to finding solutions to grow your research can face some strong headwinds. I have not yet found a way to stand up to these headwinds. That’s why, on my previous post, I mentioned that if climate heating continues to be an issue, our plan, so far, is to wait until an apparent climate emergency becomes a problem.
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